Sunday, December 11, 2016

Sort of like trying to talk to a Trump supporter

From "Close Encounters" to "Arrival,"
Hollywood has long been fascinated with the idea of communicating with space
aliens. But is it even possible? Or wise?

In recent years, a fierce debate has erupted over proposals to
beam messages toward distant solar systems. Until now, the search for
extraterrestrial intelligence -- or SETI -- has largely been limited to
listening for radio signals from other galaxies. Having failed to detect a
single peep, some scientists want to turn the tables and begin broadcasting
missives from Earth into deep space.

But that creates two dilemmas.

First and foremost is the possibility of connecting with hostile
civilizations. Should we risk announcing our location to real-life equivalents
of Klingons or Stormtroopers? As physicist Stephen Hawking warned in 2010,
"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in
America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans."

The second quandary is how to communicate with creatures from
another world.

The traditional assumption is that photos or other visual images
are a universal language that any advanced life form could understand. In
reality, it's extremely unlikely that extraterrestrials would see things as humans
do, says Don Hoffman, professor of cognitive sciences at the University of
California, Irvine.

Even on our own planet, eyesight varies widely, he notes. Bats
perceive the world via radar. Indian pythons see in infrared. And honeybees
navigate by detecting polarized light.

Differences in vision also occur within species. For example,
nearly one in five women is born with an extra photoreceptor gene and sees
colors invisible to everyone else, according to research led by Kimberly
Jameson of UCI's Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences.

So it stands to reason that beings from other galaxies would
evolve sight systems unlike anything on Earth, Hoffman says. Even if
extraterrestrials somehow did develop human-style eyes, they wouldn't interpret
images the same way we do, he says.

A few years ago, at a SETI Institute conference on interstellar
communication, Hoffman appeared on the bill after a presentation by radio
astronomer Frank Drake, who pioneered the search for alien civilizations in
1960.

Drake showed the audience dozens of images that had been launched into
space aboard NASA's Voyager probes in the 1970s. Each picture was carefully
chosen to be clearly and easily understood by other intelligent beings, he told
the crowd.

After Drake spoke, Hoffman took the stage and "politely
explained how every one of the images would be infinitely ambiguous to
extraterrestrials," he recalls.

Evolution and culture shape how a brain processes and interprets
visual stimuli, Hoffman says. To someone raised in a remote jungle, for
instance, a mushroom cloud would mean something very different than it does to
an average American. And even the American's perception isn't an accurate
reflection of reality, he says.

Hoffman likens the images our brain "sees" of the world
around us to desktop icons on a computer screen, which bear no physical
resemblance to the electronics inside. As evidence, his website features
optical illusions that demonstrate how the mind can misread and distort
external input.

Thus, attempts to communicate visually with space beings are
bound to fail, Hoffman says. "Even the simplest of images will be
misinterpreted," he concludes in a paper on interstellar messages.

Would sound work better, perhaps along the lines of the
synthesizer tones used to communicate with extraterrestrials in "Close
Encounters of the Third Kind"?

In 1977, Voyager rocketed into space carrying recordings of
animal noises, poetry readings and a library of music, from classical to Chuck
Berry. The mission prompted "Saturday Night Live" to joke that aliens
had intercepted the craft and transmitted a four-word reply to Earth:
"Send more Chuck Berry."

Thought for the day

Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC! Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution? Likewise for many other shows? Very unfair and should be looked into. This is the real Collusion!

Individual One’s tweet at 4:52 AM - 17 Feb 2019 after a long, hard day of playing golf at Mar-A-Lago on Day Two of our “national emergency.”

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